Going to bed with North Toronto Post

Michael Bliss - Living in LeasideMay 1, 2015

Welcome home Leaside Life. We hope you enjoyed your March break, somewhere in the south. We missed you.

Leaside has survived without you, though not without difficulty. In the month you did not publish no one knew what was really happening around here. It may be that businesses on Bayview disappeared without a peep, developers snuck hideous new projects through the OMB, traffic got even worse, and church attendance continued to fall. Now that you’re back to keep an eye on things, all will be reversed.

You left Leaside for your holiday, by the way, just as the weather was beginning to improve. After the cold of January and February we had a fairly pleasant March, and April isn’t cruel at all.

In any case, did you really have to go? The Canadian tradition of migrating south in the winter dates from olden days of ice in the chamber pots before someone lit the wood stove on frosty mornings. I’ll bet you have central heating in your million dollar bungalows, and despite all your complaints you didn’t feel cold at all this winter. It was just some primordial instinct that nagged you to fly away.

And I’ll bet you’re already planning to flee north from the sweltering heat of summer. Only a few weeks, isn’t it, until you open up the cottage; and what will we do for community reading on steamy nights in July and August? It just isn’t the same here when there’s only the North Toronto Post to go to bed with.

We’ve invented air conditioning, you know, and Leaside is actually just as pleasant a place in the summer as it is in winter. There’s really no need to get out of town any more in either season.

So how about reconsidering this restless, atavistic wandering, and planning to stay home for a year or two? What does it say about Leaside (and all the rest of north Toronto) when everyone goes away for as long as they can afford to twice every year?

Of course the neighbourhood is always very peaceful when all of you are gone trying to have a good time somewhere else. Some say that’s when Leaside is at its very best – when it has the least number of Leasiders. At least there’s lots of parking when the children and grandchildren migrate the other way round, when they come home to renew their roots in this lovely, quiet community.

Full disclosure: the Bliss house has occasionally been empty during winter and summer breaks, but we were probably away on business (I was once asked to write about skiing at Whistler), and no one missed us.